I threw M1 proto, M3 proto, D1 FR and D4 FR for the initial test yesterday. The store thought they had M4 protos and FRs but actually an M3 had slipped in to the shipment and i got it by accident. I thought they didn't have M3s so i decided to try the M4 even though i am not really in need of such a disc as i think it is based on how others have described M4s. Boy was i lucky because the M3 Proto is a nice disc. 29 F calm to 8 MPH winds. The longest toss was 315' 2-3 degree flip to fade and with a Proton Axis i got a similar tight golf s-curve to 323'. The M3 got to where i got my Roc3 earlier with less clothing in a few degrees warmer weather. I only tried to rip at full power so i don't know how it powers down yet. At full power i might be wrist rolling the Roc3 because at times it does not flip and at others (mostly) it flips the same two degree range as the M3 does. Here is the kicker: I used a two finger power grip without a glove and any grip enhancers and never got a slip even though the disc was as hard as a plate from being frozen. It still retained minor tackiness. The Roc3 slips out much more easily in warmer weather even with three finger power grip and at times with a full power grip of four fingers. The best distance seemed to come with a similar apex height as the Roc3.

The M1 proto is not Gator like actually like some have suggested. I also have not broken in fully a D Zone. The M1 is straighter than either and very power hungry. Speedier than Jokeri ending up in the same place roughly distance and left finish wise on a different path. The M1 starts to fade earlier but the Jokeri moves more later in the flight with the more abrupt and harder fade. Being flat topped and not that tall and quite overstable and power hungry i expect the M1 to FH nicely. It was cold and my arm was hurting from slamming on too much power too early without having warmed up fully so i did not FH at any real power just problem free short approaches. No slips with this one either.

The D1 first run 167 is way too much of a disc for me in having a too high power requirement and early and quickly angle adding fast dropping fade. IIRC i got a flat full power release to go 350' after skips that are massive. I mean 100' left on the landing point on low throws. Annied low it picked up D to get to something like 370' with nice altitude holding for the short while it was close to flat. The flight plate of the drivers is thinner than with the mids so pushing hard the thumb flexed the flight plate for more grip so no slips. I need to try this disc into stiff headwinds to see if it is true stable or speed stable for me. Being shorter and more OS than my regular headwind disc Force (i reserved my atypically OS Quantum Quasar for wet day storm headwind duty but the situation didn't rise up since i got it being sidelined due to surgery for a long time) i think grip won't be an issue any more. The D1 is easily the grippiest of these discs so i will feel more confident during the throw as long as i can get straight enough headwind shots. If i cannot the Force will do that and the D1 will do the left finishes. The plastic and grip plus distance is very close to Prodiscus Premium Slaidi that is slower in Wraith category speed wise but at least my early one is way more OS than even the beefy Wraith i have.

The real star is the First run 173 D4. For once i got a better example than some here. Meaning MikeC has more power than i do and mine flipped less than his video showed but also faded later and less with a slower increase rate in the hyzer angle. No slips two fingered power grip without gripping aid. Approximately 20-23' tall annied release s-curves to 418' after skip. Dropping the apex to around 15-17' had the disc maintain the speed much better and it really moved downrange. I guess it landed at 400'ish flat and skipped very forward dominated into a snow bank that probably didn't reduce the D more than a few max 10 feet i guess. At 437'. Which is great for me and well above my previous Nuke and 137 Bliz Boss cold weather record. At my power the flip from flat in low throws is around 3-5 degrees. I need more throws to confirm that though i was just slamming hard trying to get it out as far as possible trying to find the best height and lines for most distance. So far it seems that the King (best variation high PLH tall dome VIP) has been dethroned from the most controllable and easy to throw for lower than Nuke/regular Boss power requirement combined with enough HSS not to be unpredictable. Especially in winds. The D1s and D4s at the shop looked like each other. I don't recall if MikeC was throwing protos but i assume so because it was some time back. If he threw protos Prodigy has improved the disc. If mine is representative of the rest. If Mike threw a FR maybe it is a form issue: I might be more spin dominant which could explain the fade difference or not all D4s are alike. Who knows based on one disc and seeing others at the store does not mean that i know what the average D4 is like and what the variations are and how common they are. At least in the case of my disc Prodigy have made a home run after hitting it out of the park. A job well done!!!

I will test the D4 more for sure on the courses and in better weather. It is highly likely to be bagged. I messed up in not getting weight forward one having a shot stall ending up at 360' landing on asphalt from at least 25' probably higher and the damage was similar to what Opto has landing hyzered from that height. Meaning definite scrapes but not terrible. Worse than Star and at times hard driver Pro blend damages less at worst cases the same YMMV. IDK about the long term durability yet but maybe throwing so fast a disc low around rocks means you need another one that is not supposed to be broken into a roller. The upside to the plastic is that it is very grippy. The worse the conditions are the more you'll appreciate the tacky grip. Nice.

Cliff note: D4 Likey very much!!!

Flat shots need running on the center line of the tee and planting each step on the center line. Anhyzer needs running from rear right to front left with the plant step hitting the ground to the left of the line you're running on. Hyzer is the mirror of that.

Got a lime D4 and D3. Windy first test was not kind to the D3 that is roller material out of the gate. It was not pretty even with initial hyzer into a headwind and it wanted to drop a lot in rear winds and low rear wind shots turned and burned. Unlike the D4 the D3 does not like nose down throwing. The lime FR 173 D4 is more HSS with less flash than the blue FR i had. In rear winds the D4 flipped at times and not at others. Both are long the D4 topped out at 423' in rear wind and 370' in headwind (fairly fast) and the D3 on a good shot was around 400-420' with the conditions getting the better of the disc the D varied a lot. A fluke shot low with the D3 skipped on asphalt and stopped at 453' landing at 400'. The D3 seems to skip a lot more forward than this lime D4. The blue D4 skipped more forward and needed initial hyzer to flip to flat. It would seem that the lime D4 does not flip or flips only a couple of degrees unless into a headwind. The winds masked the true behavior but every time i threw it in a rear wind with initial hyzer no matter how small it did not flip to flat or anywhere as far as i could tell.

The D3 skips very forward more so than the blue D4 i lost and the lime D4 skips Wraithish to front left. I don't know about the glide in calm conditions but in the winds today they did not seem to be glide monsters. Pro Destroyerish at the most i'd say a little less gliding without doing a side by side comparison.

Has anyone tried enough D4s in different colors to say for sure how large the variation are between colors? At the store i bought mine from were three other lime D4s and i got the one with the highest PLH the domes seemed to be the same but there were three different PLHs on those four discs. My highest PLH one was about 1.5 millimeters higher than the lowest one so i imagine there are lots of flight variations between D4s if others have as wide variations between individual discs.

Flat shots need running on the center line of the tee and planting each step on the center line. Anhyzer needs running from rear right to front left with the plant step hitting the ground to the left of the line you're running on. Hyzer is the mirror of that.

JR wrote:Has anyone tried enough D4s in different colors to say for sure how large the variation are between colors? At the store i bought mine from were three other lime D4s and i got the one with the highest PLH the domes seemed to be the same but there were three different PLHs on those four discs. My highest PLH one was about 1.5 millimeters higher than the lowest one so i imagine there are lots of flight variations between D4s if others have as wide variations between individual discs.

My first D4 purchase was a translucent swirly slime green marked 174 proto that kicked the esp nukes out of my bag. I quickly bought another 174 slime green, two 172 yellow, and two 174 opaque lime green D4s, all protos. The opaque lime greens have a higher dome and lower PLH than the others and I found them a half tick less stable during the turn portion of the flight with more glide than the slime green one in my bag at the time. I went on a two day 10+ hour MAX D binge due in large part to a strong storm blowing through with 22-30mph winds and my forgetting the problems I had with my shoulder a couple years earlier during a noob throw farrr stage of my disc career. I had a few sky annys over 500' in those winds all with the higher dome lower PLH opaques. Four months later, my shoulder is just now recovering to the point where I can throw near full power overheads without fear of pain The yellow's PLH are about the same as the slime greens but with a lower dome. The yellows would turn a hair more than my bagged slime green of similar PLH but I believe the flatter dome meant less glide. The flatter yellows appeared to fight out of the turn about the same as the slime greens but on average where 10-15' shorter in distance during my early stages of learning the mold. I think they were a touch more nose sensitive and slightly more apt to stay turned without full flexing compared to the others with higher domes. It could be a weight issue as I've read reports of proto D4s weighing as much as 180g.

Anyway, I have a tourney this weekend and the longest hole Bud Hill #4 is 550' turnover s-curve shot. The tree line on the right has grown a bit since this pic and the disc needs to turn and get right before the trees 350' in the middle of the fairway to allow for an easy upshot on the right side of divided "H" shaped fairway.

This tourney will be played exclusively at Bud Hill so I'll see this shot three times so I decided I better get in some field work. My four month old D4 has seen a lot of work BH and FH. Yesterday I was flexing it over on a 25-30' high line that would track 75-100' right before flexing back 420-435' when thrown correctly. Funny thing is my other backup D4s would only flip to flat and fade out hard 380-400' on the same line and full power including my initially less stable opaques. I write all this to say that the D4 only gets better when seasoned, unless of course it starts off as a complete roller like the your D3 review. BTW, I can throw my bagged green slime D4 hard at 11:30 at less than 20' from a decent hyzer and it will flip up track 20' to the right before fading out to 400' at 12 o'clock. FH and a quick shuffle hyzer release pops to a stable straight flight for 270' fading forward 20-30' to the right out to 300'. Any more torque and it flips unreliably for me but I don't field work flick much further to save my elbow.

Sorry I don't have any experience with first runs or production runs compared to protos but I'd be interested in other's impressions. I had an orange first run D1 that flies like three of my other blue proto D1s. I also have a 170 blue D1 that I can hyzer flip turn a bit that is NOT a headwind disc and another 164 blue D1 that I can also turn a little more but I think that's mainly due to its lighter weight. I did sky anny the 170 "flippy" D1 to 490' once and its currently my goto max D when space isn't unlimited so I'm hoping I'll find another for 400+ hyzers without having to flex.

Here's a pic, yellow and green D4s on the bottom, D1s up top: The green Cameron Colglazier D1 is a big boy 30+mph headwind disc they ran for the team before the Memorial but I can only throw it just over 300' It might be more stable than the Nuke OS I tried and thought why??

Yellow D4 vs Green Opaque D4:

My advice with all discs is pick up several, preferably used at a greatly reduced price, keep the ones you like and sell/trade the rest.

The same is true of other companies as well. Sounds like my d1 is on the os side although lonkero than 300'.

Flat shots need running on the center line of the tee and planting each step on the center line. Anhyzer needs running from rear right to front left with the plant step hitting the ground to the left of the line you're running on. Hyzer is the mirror of that.

JR wrote:The same is true of other companies as well. Sounds like my d1 is on the os side although lonkero than 300'.

Cameron threw the lighter blue in the my pic above and called it, "a good one". It'll take a 20mph headwind given a little hyzer and still fade out but thrown flatish into that 20+ wind and it'll turn 50'+ with some late fade but still well right of neutral. Those same flat throws flip and burn my previous go far star bosses that the D1s replaced. My other fresher D1s are in the same overstability range as the seasoning light blue is now but the light blue started off a half tick more overstable than several darker blue protos and an orange first run D1 I picked up a little later.

Flat shots need running on the center line of the tee and planting each step on the center line. Anhyzer needs running from rear right to front left with the plant step hitting the ground to the left of the line you're running on. Hyzer is the mirror of that.

D4 on Bud Hill 550' #4 was up and down this weekend. My first of three throws on the hole was my best ever, flexed out to 450' and hit the top of the rim with a standstill Ion upshot for a drop in par. My second round D4 drive didn't turn, stalled out, and ended up on the left tree line 400' down the fairway. On Sunday, my third D4 drive was my worst ever on long #4 as I slipped on the teebox (rained the night before) and shanked dead right almost taking out the group on the previous tee If you don't have close to 400' power, the D4 isn't going to turn a lot unless you flex it on a decent anny.

I threw a fresh green proto 174 D3 a few times this weekend and found it very easy to hyzer flip to stable. I wouldn't throw it into a headwind but it did go 350ish on a low line with less turn than I was expecting. I was throwing for less than max d and on a micro slip throw expected it to fade out early but instead was pleased to see it hold the line. I liken it to a stable vip king with less and later LSS. Its not a beginner disc but might be useful for hyzer flip all out D on a golf line.

Got a few first drives with my D2 in a healthy headwind (read not nice) and it flipped too much and was pretty fussy about the correct compensation angle down to a degree but it seemed to cut the wind decently so for the lines and the speed of the wind it cut through ok. Little joy because it is not dependable in a headwind. The place i was in offers no other throwing directions so each shot was into the wind. It seems to have distance potential so i need to try it out in another place where i can rip it with less problems. Fairly soft flight plate so thumb just inside of the rim pressed quite far into the disc with stronger grips.

Flat shots need running on the center line of the tee and planting each step on the center line. Anhyzer needs running from rear right to front left with the plant step hitting the ground to the left of the line you're running on. Hyzer is the mirror of that.

Got a couple of no and mild headwind throws yesterday with the D4 and the D2 and both behaved nicely. The D4 flipped over a little from about 3 degrees of hyzer landed at about 410' and skipped far off a hard dirt road but i don't know how far because a club mate picked it up before i got there. The skip was very forward dominant but it may have been because the apex was very low and the disc did not have time to fade that much so for so much distance and probably under 8' height the D was impressive. That got me interested and the disc might have redeemed itself for me somewhat. Enough to make my try it some more.

The D2 behaved much better this time but i threw it too low except once too high trying to compensate so IDK really what it can do but compared to a 165 Pro Beast the fade was harder so domey high PLH Opto Flow/S TD of the straight kind, FR Sword (beefier than the later ones) territory fade wise. No flipping at all at full power. Too bad about the Innova L wing type speed stability in headwinds. For a disc that fast and that kind of fade it has better competitors for a more wind tolerance across different conditions. It looks to have good distance potential like the D3 and D4 but with that harder fade it is different enough otherwise except in stiffer headwinds. I imagine that it handles cross winds better than the D3 and the D4. It is much closer to the D3 than the D1 in stability.

Flat shots need running on the center line of the tee and planting each step on the center line. Anhyzer needs running from rear right to front left with the plant step hitting the ground to the left of the line you're running on. Hyzer is the mirror of that.

That's disappointing to hear that the D2 can't handle any headwinds. It sounds similar to my flippy D1 that I wouldn't throw into a headwind over 10mph or any mild headwind without hyzer. I'd compare it to similar lines as a well seasoned star boss. I do like the flippy D1 for mild wind shots needing fade and on a good rip over 400' I see some turn unless its a tailwind. My seasoned D4 is going to turn or flip up every time but at least I know that for sure and have enough practice to adjust for it but not a ton of confidence in a tourney so I'll give up that extra 30-40' and avoid an embarrassing turn and burn. perhaps its time for a fresh D4.

Threw a buddy's green 172 D3 the other day. On a low power, low line x-step out to 350' it flipped up and held the slight turnover line with very little fade. It flew a similar line to his fusion renegade at the same power but with a touch less fade.

I have two PA1s: a 400s as a thrower (more durable) and a 300s as a putter (stiffer). So far I LOVE the 400s as a thrower and I LIKE the 300s as a putter.

For throwing, I find the PA1 to be overstable enough that it's v reliable for me - I'm not going to turn it over - while at the same time not being crazy overstable like a Zone or something. And I love the feel of the 400s plastic for throwing.

I'm a push-putter so the stiffness of the 300s plastic is good for me. Interestingly, it's much flatter than the 400s - even a little concave (think Yeti Pro Aviar though not that much). Has anyone else found this? I like it but I'm still getting used to how flat/concave it is - haven't yet gotten super consistent with its release.

I've bagged a sky blue 172 400 PA-1 about a month ago and have been liking it at the bag tag minis at Bud Hill. Its had a dependable fade on low golf lines and I've been using it with an x-step on approaches that are 30-40' shorter distance than I'd comfortably power up my max z buzzz. This past weekend was the PA-1's first tournament and I guess I need some more time to figure it out as I had a couple misjudged sidearm releases and one 235' backhand flip into a 10-15mph headwind on #17A. During the first round on #17B, the PA-1 preformed beautifully landing pin high to within 15' into a 10mph headwind. On the good backhand headwind tee shot on that hole, the basket was more of a natural hyzer line to my eye with the basket 40' further to the left and not dead straight ahead the teepad.Hyzer drive good:

Flat drive bad:

On one flick I thought I was giving it a lot of hyzer on a 150' approach around a group of trees protecting the basket but the PA-1 just flipped to flat and may have faded 5' from my aim line leaving a 30' putt. On the last hole of the tourney, I needed a 100' steep hyzer flick out of trouble from behind a tree but instead snapped it way left into a tree 20' away... more practice under pressure required. In the past, I would normally preform these flick approaches with my z buzzz or Ion with some practiced degree of touch.

Maybe I need to put the Ion back in the bag for flick approaches as the Ion only gave me release issues with my putts under pressure. Maybe I need to give up on putter approaches and go z buzzz for flick and trusty QMS for backhand standstills. All the cool kids throw putters and who doesn't want to be cool?